HIGGINSON, THOMAS WENTWORTH (1823-191I), American author and soldier, was born of Puritan stock in Cam bridge (Mass.), Dec. 22, 1823, and died there on May 9, 1911. Graduating from Harvard in 1841, he was a schoolmaster for two years, a student of theology at the Harvard divinity school, and pastor of the First Religious Society (Unitarian) of New buryport (Mass.), and of the Free Church at Worcester. He was such an ardent abolitionist that he felt moved to resign his first pulpit. In the Civil War he was captain in the 51st Massachusetts volunteers, and from Nov. 1862 to Oct. 1864, when he was retired because of a wound received earlier, he was colonel of the 1st South Carolina Volunteers, the first regiment recruited from former slaves for the Federal service.
In Army Life in a Black Regiment (187o) he described his experiences. The rest of his life was spent chiefly in literary work at Newport (R. I.), and at Cambridge. His writings show a deep love of nature, art and humanity; they are marked by vigour of thought, sincerity of feeling, grace and finish of style. In his Common Sense about Women (1881), and his Women and Men (1887), he advocated equality of- opportunity and equality of rights for the two sexes.
Among his numerous books are Outdoor Papers (1863) ; Malbone: an Oldport Romance (1869) ; Young Folks' History of the United States (1875) ; Life of Margaret Fuller Ossoli 0884) ; Travellers and Outlaws (1889) ; The Afternoon Landscape 0889), poems and trans lations; Life of Francis Higginson (1891) ; Procession of the Flowers and Kindred Papers (1897) ; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (i9o2) ; John Greenleaf Whittier (19o2) ; Reader's History of American Litera ture (i9o3) ; "Lowell Institute lectures" edited by H. W. Boynton; and Life and Times of Stephen Higginson (19o7). His volumes of reminis cence, Cheerful Yesterdays 0898), Old Cambridge (1899), Con temporaries 0899), and Part of a Man's Life (1905) are characteristic and charming works.
A definitive edition of his writings was published in seven volumes (19oo) . A biography by his second wife, Mary T. Higginson, Thomas Wentworth Higginson: The Story of His Life, was issued in 1914.